Posts Tagged ‘New England’

Okay, so it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these postings. A really, long while. But for some reason I felt compelled to start writing a few entries again.

This came after yet another putrid Boston Red Sox season, and now as the New England Patriots are 3-3 in what was supposed to be the easiest NFL schedule for 2012 after losing in the final minutes to the Seattle Seahawks. Let’s tackle the Patriots first, shall we.

It would be easy to call out the curse of east coast teams traveling to Seattle, where all never seem to do well. Or the fact that they are known for the twelfth-man for causing visiting teams fits. But this is a game that the Patriots should have won, yet let if sputter away in grand fashion. And what was once their bread-and-butter, winning these type of games from behind, is now just something of the past. Like the 2004 Super Bowl winning season.

Since then, their offense has ramped up as Tom Brady morphed from a really good possession quarterback to one of the best offensive quarterbacks of all time. And the defense, which was really the reason for all of the Super Bowl wins, has just gotten worse as time has moved on.

Yes it has become a “pass happy” league where many teams are trying to find quarterbacks who can heave the ball and rack up tons of yards. Lots of teams are trying to go that way too. But there can only be two teams that can make the Super Bowl each year. And while you can somehow make it there with the worst defense in the league, chances are you aren’t going to win it.

But to me, the hardest part to watch hasn’t been their defense, but their fourth quarter offense. It seems now that there is no score too big that the Pats offense should be racking up as quickly as possible. That’s because there always seems to be those terrible drives that make the Pats go three-and-out, just to give the ball back to the other side with plenty of time left.

That was the beauty of the older teams with not that much offensive star power to them: they could close out games. To me, if that Seattle game was like it used to be, that sure they would make it a six-point game with 7:21 left in the game. But then the Patriots would just have one of those 15-play drives that would only result in a 25 yard field goal, but make it a 2 possession game with less than a minute left.

But now we’re getting intentional groundings at key moments (remember the first possession in the Super Bowl?), interceptions, missed receivers and three-and-outs. Even in the win over Denver, New England tried to convert a 4th-and-5, and the worst possible outcome happened: Brady was sacked and fumbled for even a bigger loss.

I don’t think that it has to be a shootout for the offensive-based Patriots to win, but more than anything else, just win the time of possession. There are now a plethora of runnings options (Woodhead, Ridley, and Bolden) to use to keep the chains moving and the clock winding down. Bring back the days of Clock Killin’ Corey Dillon.

Yes, it’s tough to admit this, but Brady is getting old. He’s still really (, really, really) good, but having to keep putting all scoring and possession responsibilities solely on his shoulders, just to erase the defense will begin to make it tougher as this and other seasons go on.

That all being said, even at 3-3, I think they’re still okay. New England still has an easy schedule coming up as well as playing in what many deem as an easy AFC East. I still think they’ll make the playoffs, likely winning their division, but how far they can go from there, to me, comes down to if they can figure out how to close out these games.

After a close victory against the Indianapolis Colts 89 hours earlier in New England, the Patriots had to prepare and fly out to Detroit for their traditional Thanksgiving game against the Lions. This had “trap game” written all over it. Similar to the Cleveland Browns game, this seemed like a game that would be overlooked. Just after playing the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Indianapolis Colts, and the rival New York Jets coming up next week, a losing team could have been an easily ignored and forgotten.

And for the first half, it looked as though the Lions were at least going to hang with the Patriots if not completely out-gamed. The first half saw the Pats were down by 11 and ended down a touchdown. The third quarter ended with the game all tied up at 24 each, but Tom Brady was starting to heat up.

Then the final quarter went completely New England’s way with three touchdowns against the no points scored for Detroit. Brady was absolutely carving up the Detroit defense without throwing a single incomplete pass. He scored three of his four touchdowns in the fourth quarter, the other one was in the third; with two of them going to Deion Branch and the other two going to Wes Welker. And to stay with the powers-of-two, BenJarvus Green-Ellis had two rushing touchdowns.

The biggest fear that I have with these 2010 Patriots is their inability, it seems, to close out games. Indy made it close because the defense was letting the Colts easily march down the field in the fourth quarter and score touchdowns at will while the offense was just going three-and-out with no time off the clock. The same happened to the defense against the Steelers, though the game was well in hand and it was clear that they were in a prevent defense (as well as the offense was scoring; though I would like to point out that if the offense didn’t do anything, we would be talking about how the young defense let Pittsburgh win the game).

But in a span of 12 days, they have played three tough games that may start to define the 2010 New England Patriots. Following a 34-14 loss against the Cleveland Browns that just became a real head-scratcher, the Pats have reeled off wins at the Pittsburgh Steelers, at home against the Colts, and in Detroit. It seems that year in, year out, the Pats are always playing meaningful games against the Steelers and the Colts for top-dog of the AFC, so to win them back to back this year at least gives them some sort of measuring stick.

And now they practically have a bye-week with 11 days off until they play the Monday night game in Foxborough against thew New York Jets, a team that has been keeping pace with the Patriots (or vice versa). A lot has been made about many of the Jets latest victories, though they seemed to handle the struggling Cincinnati Bengals fairly well on Thanksgiving day. And with them also having 11 days off as well, two well rested teams will be duking it out for the top position in the AFC East, and will likely decided how the playoffs will setup (with the one-seed being either team).

There was just over two minutes left in the fourth quarter, and I decided that maybe the best place to watch the rest of the game was on my hands and knees… praying… to the porcelain vortex.

Okay, maybe I really didn’t watch the rest of the New England Patriots game against the Indianapolis Colts from the bathroom. But a nauseating sensation of déjà vu wasn’t just creeping in – it was flooding in.

The Patriots missed a great opportunity to score a touchdown at the start of the final quarter and settled with a field goal to go up 31-14 with over ten minutes remaining. And then what followed has happened many times in the last few meetings between Indy and the Pats: no lead is safe with that Guy across the field.

In the next 2:26, Peyton Manning marched down the field and scored a touchdown. The Patriots responded with a 40-second three-and-out. The Colts then scored another touchdown in 2:18 (which also included a very helpful unnecessary roughness penalty by Tully Banta-Cain). That’s 14 points in 5:24 to make it 31-28.

So, with 4:46 to go, I was looking for a nice old fashioned staple of the New England Patriots: the clock draining drive. Get first downs. Make the opposing team use timeouts.

Instead, the Patriots got one first down and punted on the next set of downs to kill 2:21 of clock. That allowed Indianapolis to have 2:25 with all three timeouts and the two-minute warning.

And there was Manning driving yet again. Going to do it yet again against New England. Then with over 30 seconds left, the Colts had first down on the 24 yard line. With an Adam Vinatieri game-tying field goal already in their pocket, Indy decided to go for the glory and get the seven points for the lead (and essentially the win).

And then the young defense finally got a little pressure at the right time. Jermaine Cunningham came around the edge and made Manning hurry a throw (and I thought that he got a finger on his arm just enough to make his throw alter ever so slightly). The pass was off the mark and James Sanders was able to pull down the interception.

A win is a win is a win, I suppose, and this one is over Indy at that. But boy do they make it interesting. And at 8-2, they now lead the NFL with the best record along with AFC East rival New York Jets (why won’t they ever seem to go down), and the Atlanta Falcons.

And not a single thing I thought would happen ended up being the case. New England’s offense and defense were very good in the first half; that was about the only thing that I got right.

Then the second half was anything but.

[Before I forget, that catch to with a minute left in the first half by Randy Moss was unbelievable.]

Watching Brady throw two picks, trying to exploit a Darrelle Revis-less Moss instead of continuing to use Wes Welkers and his new toys, the tight ends, just was too much to watch. The running game gave them nothing, forcing third-and-longs on every series in the second half, and then not converting. Then the Jets looked like the Patriots in the first half offensively, just marching down the field at will.

I know that the Patriots aren’t going 16-0 (again) and weren’t going to run the table in the AFL East this season, so maybe in the grand scheme of things, a road loss to the Jets might not be something to keep them out of the playoffs. But if the defense can’t keep a supposed-suspect offense from constantly marching down the field, and if the offense gets shutout with 3 major players on the Jets defense out, then the wins might be hard to come by with their schedule.

The season opener for the New England Patriots is in the books and ended much better than I initially thought it would.

Yes, everyone has been saying that the offense was going to be fine, though there are questions in the running game. And since then, they traded away their former first-round draft pick and a sixth-round pick next year, for a fourth-round pick. With Laurence Maroney now gone, there is an abundance of old running backs to go along with the younger BenJarvus Green-Ellis (25); Sammy Morris (33), Fred Taylor (34) and Kevin Faulk (34).

But the idea that there is not one but two viable receivers at the tight end position is what I think makes this offense extremely powerful. In the end, I think that there will be just too many options to cover that Tom Brady can just stand there and pick a defense apart. He was able to do just that in Week 1 over the Cincinnati Bengals, but a true test will be this weekend against the New York Jets. The key match that will be the focus of attention will be Randy Moss (who is apparently going to play harder for a contact) versus Darrelle Revis (who just got his payday after a long holdout). Assuming that Wes Welker (who looked like he never had ACL surgery in the offseason) will draw Antonio Cromartie, that would leave plenty of options still for Brady.

The defense was the big question mark coming out of the preseason, with a very young crew of in the backfield. Against the much-ballyhooed Bengals offense, they practically shut them down for the first half. I don’t know if Cincinnati was able to figure it out in the second half, or the fact that the Pats went into a prevent-defense since they were up 31-3 very early in the half, but 3 touchdowns were scored.

So the week 2 matchup between these two rivals will line up as these two questions: Can the high-powered New England offense out-gun the great New York defense? And, can the struggling Jets offense put up enough points against a young Pats defense?

I don’t think that New York will be limited to field goals all season long. Baltimore has one of the top defenses in the league, so it can make any defense look terrible. But on the flip side, I don’t think that the Baltimore offense is that great, so it made the Jets defense look fantastic. So with the shortened week to give both sides less time to heal, this should help the Pats with the trip to the Meadowlands.